Inch by inch

It's the coldest day of the winter so far. To distract myself from the fact that I can't walk outside without losing feeling in my ears, I've been reminiscing about my garden. Just looking at these pictures is making me feel warmer; I hope they'll help you too.

Tomatoes!

This was the first year that I was able to have something resembling an actual garden. Because I live in the city, I did the whole thing in pots, with the help of a fantastic book on container gardening that I would highly recommend to anyone looking to start a similar project. Most books on container gardening assume that you're doing flowers and don't provide any advice on growing anything edible. I did plant a few flowers, but mostly I was interested in growing veggies and herbs, and this book was a great reference.

In the spring, I started with a few terra cotta pots of herbs on the first-floor deck, just off the kitchen for easy access.

left to right: cilantro, parsley, parsley, lemon thyme, rosemary, and lavender

As the months progressed, I added a few more herbs (mint, regular thyme, tarragon, and chives), and some snapdragons for color.

These were all started from seedlings, so I guess you can say I cheated a little. But the sunflowers I did from seeds, and they were extremely happy on my third floor deck, which faces southwest and hence gets a ton of sun. I just love sunflowers; they always make me smile.

I also did the shell peas from seeds, and these were far and away the most satisfying to watch. I started them inside in a little nursery container on my kitchen windowsill...

...then moved them outside to a proper container with lots of trellising once they were big enough. I fear that they were a bit overcrowded, but they managed OK.

There weren't quite enough to make spring pea risotto, as I was planning, but they did taste lovely in a light tomato cream sauce with mushrooms and fresh whole wheat pasta from the Italian market.

I also grew tomatoes and basil, of course, those home-gardening staples. The basil I bought at the garden center, but the tomato seedlings were a housewarming gift from my real estate agent and her boyfriend, who maintain what can only be described as a rooftop jungle of tomato plants. The basil was especially happy on the third floor, basking in the sun and producing enough bounty to keep our freezer stocked with several month's worth of pesto.

But nothing was as happy as the habeñeros. I started off with one measly three-inch-high seedling and ended up with a bumper crop over over fifty peppers.

They were so spicy that even Michael couldn't stand to use more than half of one to flavor an entire dinner. After quickly calculating that, at this rate, we would both be well into our retirement before using them up, we gave them to the cook at the pub on the corner to see what he could do with them. This turned out to be a really smart move. He made an insanely good batch of sweet-hot pepper jelly, part of which we served in our Thanksgiving meal, and the last of which is going on a baked brie later this afternoon.

Another big winner was the green garlic, which is so ridiculously easy to grow that it's a wonder I ever bought garlic shoots. Here's how: Take a head of garlic. Break it up into cloves. Push each clove root-side down into the soil. Don't worry about spacing them evenly or burying them too deep. Wait about a week. Snip off the green parts about an inch above the soil. Make green garlic soup with new potatoes. Feel happy.

I cut all of them over the summer and pulled up most of the cloves, but left some in the pot to go dormant over the winter. If all goes well, I'll have full heads of garlic, as well as more garlic shoots, in the spring.

I'm also overwintering some of the herbs on our windowsill in the kitchen. They're quite dried out by this point, and I fear that they're dead, although Michael (not generally known for his optimistic outlook or his knowledge of gardening) assures me that they've merely gone dormant. We'll see come spring.

We'll also see the results of my fall bulb planting frenzy, for which purpose I re-mulched the tree box on the sidewalk and tore out the plants in the window box. On a side note, I really should have been more careful with what I planted in the window boxes; I think I kinda forgot that plants, you know, grow.

May

October

Anyway, in their stead, I planted bulbs for purple and white crocuses, since they start coming up in the very early spring, right around my birthday. I also planted bulbs for purple hyacinths and for daffodils, to give some color contrast. I can't wait until they start sprouting --- not only because that will mean that it's spring again, and not only because that will mean that it's my birthday, but because it will mean that the damned squirrels haven't eaten them all.

Bonus video! John Denver on The Muppet Show, singing "The Garden Song." Aww!